


Death Knocks Three Times

by tjstar



Series: (un)adopted [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 2019, Dreams and Nightmares, Exhaustion, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Murder, No Incest, Post-Canon, Relapsing, Sleep Deprivation, Sparrow!Ben, the sparrow academy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26580025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjstar/pseuds/tjstar
Summary: Ben is dead, his crimson jacket is all blood-soaked, his Horror is well-fed.Klaus growls as Reginald’s neck snaps beneath his fingers.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone
Series: (un)adopted [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917556
Comments: 16
Kudos: 223





	Death Knocks Three Times

Reginald’s eyes are about to pop out of the sockets as Klaus’ hands crash his windpipe. His face is bright red and his tongue is swollen, peeking out of his mouth like a slug. And Klaus is so frenzied and powerful — the ghosts are cheering for him, the ghosts are ready to welcome one more ugly soul to their team. 

Ben is dead, his crimson jacket is all blood-soaked, his Horror is well-fed. 

Klaus growls as Reginald’s neck snaps beneath his fingers. 

***

Klaus screams. 

Bed sheets stick to his sweaty back, fists clenched and breathing shaky; he can’t sleep while he’s surrounded by the ghosts, all wanting to get his attention. Klaus prays,

“God, please make them leave. Go away, please, please, leave me alone.”

Nightmares don’t let him relax, ghosts don’t let him live; sobriety is killing him, this timeline is like a splinter under his nail. Klaus looks at an empty bed next to his — he’s sure Five hasn’t slept since they time-jumped to 2019 — and presses his palm to his mouth to smother his cry. He wonders if the ghosts can still possess him, he wonders if they still _want_ to get his body. 

“Stop looking at me!”

Klaus is scared, he might still make them tangible by accident; he picks his clothes from the floor — Allison brought some from the second-hand shop yesterday — a mesh black top and tight leather pants. Without laces. “I don’t want you to get cold,” she said as she handed it to him along with a too-big cardigan. 

Klaus ties his greasy hair in a bun and stumbles to the door. No one heard him scream in his sleep or they’ve just gotten used to it. He’s surprised he’s still allowed to leave his room after his conflict with Diego. They care about him, but he _doesn’t_ care and,

_“He killed me right there.”_

Stab wounds, gunshot wounds, all types of crimes and murder mysteries. This hotel is a cemetery itself.

“I can handle it,” Klaus says, closing his eyes. “I can handle it.”

His head hurts as he falls into a pre-relapse blackout; he can’t control himself, and there’s no one to stop him. The ghosts try to touch him, try to walk through, and he covers his ears with his hands, cursing them, hyperventilating and choking. 

And, he takes his usual medicine.

He still can’t think straight, and the music at the bar is loud enough to drown out the ghosts. Klaus is a shot away from crying on the bartender’s chest, downing neat whiskey as the world around him gets all blurry. He’d like to drop acid, but he’s gonna have to deal with stomach acid creeping up his throat at first. The glass slips out of his fingers as somebody yanks him by the back of his cardigan, dragging him off the stool; the drink spills out onto his top, cooling his sweaty skin.

“What the hell?”

“Same question.”

Klaus rubs his face and looks over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of a red sleeve. He doesn’t want to leave since his sobriety is messed up anyway, but Ben’s grip is too strong. 

“I just…” Klaus hiccups. “Maybe I just need somebody to stop me?..” 

He doesn’t resist when Ben pushes him to the door; they go outside, to the car parked at the corner of the street. 

“That asshole spiked your drink.”

“The bartender?”

Ben nods.

Klaus laughs.

“Sure he did.”

“Get in,” Ben grumbles, throwing the car’s door open.

“Where are you taking me?” 

Ben doesn’t answer. Klaus gets into the passenger seat; he doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want _anything._ He’s not drunk enough to just pass out, he’s well aware of everything. He can’t go back to the hotel just to be alone in the room; but he spilled that damn drink, there’s no _chemicals_ in his system. He’s almost sad about that. And Ben, still in that sparrow uniform — oh, he and Five have a lot of similarities in their fashion sense — Ben is still his savior. But he’s a stranger, not a brother anymore. Alternatively raised, alternatively treated. 

“I had to run away,” Ben says. Matter-of-factly. “The mansion never felt like home.”

Klaus says,

“I lived in two mansions but wasn’t happy in any of them.”

But he was happy at the club in Saigon, he was happy sharing a bedroll with Dave until the war took his body, took his soul. 

Ben looks at the road, squeezing the steering wheel tighter.

“I need you to sober up.”

“I’m just a little tipsy,” Klaus sniffles. He rubs his face, forgetting about the eyeliner; makeup can’t conceal the rings under his eyes. “I… I don’t even feel alive anymore.”

It’s wrong, it’s unhealthy, and _his_ Ben is still gone.

“You shouldn’t even exist in this timeline.”

“You know, I could end it right about now.”

Klaus feels like sobbing; Ben doesn’t get his joke, Ben doesn’t believe his smile. He stops the car at the cornfield and urges Klaus to get out; Klaus stretches, filling his lungs with fresh air and reaches for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Ben turns away when Klaus exhales a smoke ring, looking at the starry sky. It makes him think of billions of universes, billions of lives and just one apocalypse that can erase everything.

Ben asks, 

“How are you doing your thing?”

 _“What_ thing?”

“The… The _ghost_ thing. From what I heard, I can say you’re scared shitless. And that’s _your power.”_

“Never asked for it, to be honest,” Klaus takes another cigarette. “That shit sucks.”

“Everything about you sucks.”

“Hey!” Klaus wipes an invisible tear off his cheek. “I’m not in my best shape, but you don’t have to insult me every time you open your mouth.”

“You said I was dead,” Ben looks up at him, curious. “What happened?”

Klaus coughs. 

“What happened, Klaus? Tell me. I need to know.”

“That _thing_ inside of you got a little too strong, and your teenage body couldn’t hold it back. A mission happened, you snapped, the Horror snapped too. The scorpion stung the frog, Benny. Finita la commedia.”

Klaus stares at the stalks in front of him. Slight, slight rustling merges into soft murmurs of the dead. They sing him a lullaby; Klaus swallows a yelp stuck in his throat.

“Klaus? Can you hear them?”

“Kinda.”

“I need you to focus on their voices if you really want to become a master of your fucking power!”

“Oh, wow,” Klaus giggles. “Are you really using dear old Dad’s methods? Do you _really_ think I didn’t try?”

“I don’t think you didn’t, I _know_ you didn’t,” Ben pushes him back into the stalks when he wants to make it back to the car. “They follow you now, and they will. You’re more than your damn addictions, but look at you — you reek of alcohol, and your lungs are about to collapse.”

Klaus cocks his head.

“Why do you care?”

“The war’s not over. And my _siblings_ don’t like to compete,” Ben hides the car keys in his pocket. Great, they’re not leaving this damn field anytime soon.

“So we’re still rivals?”

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Klaus bites his wobbling lips. “It’s… It’s nothing.”

Ben says,

“You want to beat the shit out of me, but you’re scared of the Horror. Sometimes I’m scared of it too, but… You can tame your power, break it like these stalks.”

“Is that… A therapy?”

“You’re a magnet, but you can also make them go away.”

“They can possess me now!” Klaus shouts, covering his face with his palms. _HELLO,_ they’re here, looking for an empty vessel. “It hurts like hell. Before, while they’re inside, after; I can’t sleep, I still can’t keep any food down, what else do you want to hear? I can’t even get drunk! Come on, tell me I’m weak, come on, Ben!” 

“Klaus…”

“What do you want from me?”

“Klaus!”

“What?”

He’s irritated. Then he notices the illumination — his fists are glowing, the stalks are glowing too; there are the silhouettes, moving slowly, surrounding them like a gleaming circle.

“You manifested them!” Ben exclaims. “You did it, I can see them!”

“No! No, no, you don’t understand,” Klaus gets all jittery as the ghosts come closer. “They can get _inside_ me, and I can’t control it,” he mumbles, hiding behind Ben’s back. “Oh shit,” there’s electricity running down his arm as a man with the cracked skull touches him. “Don’t let them violate me again,” Klaus begs. He wants to turn his radar off, he wants _Ben_ to do something about that.

Corn stalks break and crunch under their steps, Klaus is about to black out as he clings to Ben, but of course, Ben doesn’t know how to banish them. Klaus tries to run, but his knees turn to jelly, body heavy and head light. 

“They’re draining me. Ben? Take me home.”

Men with their necks twisted, women with their dresses ripped, and kids, oh, _kids._ Lost, waiting for their mommy to pick them up. Klaus can’t summon his energy and block the cacophony of sounds, a pressure in his head grows, making his nose bleed. 

“You can do it,” Ben says calmly.

“No, I can’t,” Klaus unclenches his fists. “You know it.”

He has to stay awake not to let them possess him.

He can’t. 

The last thing he hears before he loses consciousness is _silence._

***

The first thing he hears when he comes to is his erratic heartbeat. The ground is wet under his cheek, and a cocoon of panic sucks him in as soon as he opens his eyes. His hand is bloodied, his lips taste like copper and soil. Klaus spits out dry grass and shakes his head.

There’s an indistinct chatting, voices muffled by the stalks. _They_ talk about him.

“There’s nothing special about him, Dad. He’s not a necromancer, just a shitty medium. Too shitty. He passed out before he could actually communicate with them. He’s useless.”

“Excellent job, Number One! He’ll never become a true Seance. Not a threat. Keep watching him, I find his immortality quite amusing.”

Klaus bites down his knuckles not to scream. Reginald is a violent puppeteer, a conductor; Ben is just one of his puppets, Ben lied about leaving the mansion, and Klaus was about to offer him to stay in his room. When it comes to his siblings, he’s so gullible, and dumb, and _broken._

He can’t see anything, but every word Ben says jabs him in the heart. 

“We should invite the others and make sure they’re taken care of. The baby especially. Otherwise the Commission will not let us just live our lives. There’s the girl who started the Apocalypse twice, remember?”

“I do, Number One. What about the medium?”

“Out like a light. No need to check on him.”

Their voices travel away, and Klaus can’t force himself to move until he hears the sound of the engine; Ben and Reginald just drive away, leaving him unconscious in the middle of nowhere. Klaus gets up and clutches the stalks not to fall over. He walks, every joint screams in pain, no ghosts in sight. He’s too exhausted to even think about Ben’s _betrayal,_ he has to warn all of his siblings before it’s too late. Klaus walks down the road looking for a sign, at least. Should be careful, should be careful if he wants to make it to the city alive. 

When a pickup truck stops right next to him, he’s beyond alert.

“You look like you need a ride.”

“No, I don’t.”

Klaus nearly twists his ankle when he tries to walk faster. 

“Oh, come on, boy, I swear I’m not like those asshats you used to work with.”

He’s persistent, Klaus ignores him until another bout of dizziness makes him fall to his knees. 

“Shit, are you okay?”

“I’m not working.” 

“Had a tough day?”

Klaus nods, gives up and climbs into a passenger seat. He’s been in the cars with strangers before, and well. He’d prefer not to think about it now. The driver is a middle-aged man with a tobacco-stained mustache and with his belly hanging above the waistband of his jeans. The first thing Klaus sees as he gets in is a picture glued to the glove box: a guy and a girl, hugging each other and smiling on camera. 

“Your kids?”

“Yeah,” the man nods. “My name is Jeffrey,” he shakes Klaus’ hand. 

“Rob,” Klaus says far too quickly. Does he look like _Rob?_

“You remind me of my son, Rob,” Jeffrey hums. “He used to steal his twin sister’s clothes and… Do you know what it’s like to be a “homophobic suburban Dad” and then realize your son is one of… _them?”_

Klaus rubs the back of his neck, feeling like he might vomit at the sight of a ghost of the girl from the picture in the backseat.

“I was mad at first. Of course I _was,_ and then Amanda went missing, my angel, my sunshine. And now there’s just the two of us against the world in attempts to find her. Wherever she is, I hope she’s going to come home one day.”

Klaus can’t tell him the truth.

“I’m trying to support my son now, do you understand? Maybe I’m not doing it right, but I’m learning.”

“It’s never too late to learn,” Klaus says. Amanda looks at him, through him, showing him her bruised veins. 

“I got something for ya.” Jeffrey says, giving Klaus a business card. “I can recognize the symptoms, son. Amanda used to get herself checked twice a year there. Might help. She’s been clean for three years.”

“Is that a rehab?”

“Yeah, but they also cure your soul.”

“Thank you, Jeff,” Klaus chokes out, shoving the card into his pocket. “I’ll call them if…”

“It’s never too late.”

Jeffrey offers him wet wipes to get rid of the blood on his face.

For the rest of the ride Klaus pretends he’s sleeping. Amanda keeps poking him with her cold fingers, but he eventually makes her disappear.

*** 

He sees Ben die again, he sees Reggie’s swollen neck and a broken monocle stuck in his eye.

*** 

He wakes up screaming again, Jeffrey shakes him by the shoulder. 

“What happened? Rob?”

Klaus shakes his head and stumbles out of the car as soon as it stops; he thanks Jeffrey with a short nod before running towards the hotel.

Sleeping in this timeline is a torture.

*** 

Klaus looks at his mirror self in the hall — his makeup is smudged, hair tousled with dirt and dry leaves stuck in it. His key card refuses to work, and he curses himself mentally as he realizes that he’s trying to get into Allison and Vanya’s room instead of his.

Suddenly, the door almost hits him in the face.

“Klaus? Oh God, you’re alive!”

Allison hugs him tightly, pulling him into the room.

“Guys, he’s here!”

Five pairs of eyes stare at him.

“You look like you’ve been buried alive,” Diego comments.

Five asks,

“Was it Ben?”

Vanya touches the tip of her nose. Klaus does the same, feeling a sticky wetness coating his fingers. 

“Ben didn’t do anything.”

Klaus leans against the wall, helpless, when Diego waves a folded piece of paper in front of his nose. 

“We got invitations,” he grins like a lunatic. “Reggie knows our address.”

Klaus frowns. 

“Sure he does.”

Does Reginald own a pigeon post? How did he manage to send the messages so quickly? Then Klaus realizes that he’s been gone for… Hours? Again. 

“What do you know? Klaus?” Diego grabs him by the front of his cardigan. “I swear to God if you don’t tell me everything…”

“You’ll punch me?” Klaus snaps back. “Feel free, it’s not that I care about it anymore.”

Diego lets him go. Cracking his code was easy. 

Five is full of nervous energy, leg bouncing and eyes glow with a fire of madness.

“What did Ben say?” 

Klaus sighs. 

“Well, he may not be as nice as I thought…”

“Klaus!”

“I think Dad wants to kill us.” 

“You think _what?”_

Klaus plods to one of the beds, ignoring Luther’s question. Falls down onto it, wincing as Vanya’s sharp knee digs in his side.

“You’ve been drinking?” Allison sounds disappointed. 

“Not allowed to go to the drug store on my own,” Klaus fends off. “Wanna go with me? We could buy some special vitamins…”

“We don’t know anything about the Sparrow Academy,” Luther says. “We should talk to them _and_ to Reginald.” 

Allison protests,

“We can’t go to the mansion unprepared.”

“Unprepared?” Klaus laughs. “We have a professional assassin, a knife-thrower, a mind-bender, a super strong King Kong boxer and Vanya. Vanya, if you want to end the world again, I don’t mind.”

“You keep forgetting one tiny detail,” Five chimes in. “We all are idiots. And by “we” I mean “you”, all of you.”

“Hey, we don’t know shit about my potential!”

Klaus is just a late bloomer, okay? At least he thinks he is. His cornfield trick left him lying on the ground unconscious, but he could somehow protect himself from another possession. He doesn’t tell his siblings about his “success” not to set their expectations of him too high. 

“Alright, we’re going to pay the old man a visit.” 

Apparently, Five is aware that two different sets of superheroes — or supervillains — can’t exist in the same timeline.

***

The mansion greets them with its dark halls and with Reginald’s voice. 

“I knew that you’d show up again.”

Klaus shivers, hugging himself. The only source of light is a chandelier, but a half of the bulbs are dead, broken, glass crunches under their feet. 

“What happened?” Vanya asks.

“Where are the others?”

No one answers Luther’s question, and the further they go, the more it looks like a trap — another trap, and Grace’s silhouette in the corner looks creepy, she just stands there, stock still, with slight blue flashes running through her wires. 

“Is she o-okay?”

Klaus squeezes Diego’s shoulder in the dark. If he’s got a soft spot about Ben, then seeing _Mom_ like this would’ve definitely broken Diego’s heart. 

“The stream of time has been disrupted after you appeared in my mansion,” Reginald says. “It requires correction so the Sparrow Academy can save the world.”

“With a father _like you,_ they’re bound to fail,” Klaus smirks. He needs Reginald to change the topic before he mentions Allison’s baby at some point. “Why can’t we just be friends, Daddy? This world’s doomed, mostly because of you and your A+ parenting.”

“You think you’re brave, boy?”

“I know I am.”

Klaus feels like he’s about to pass out when he hears the ghosts. Every time, no matter how old he is — he wants to run away and hide, pop some pills and wash them down with booze. 

“You have something that belongs to me,” Reginald turns to Allison.

“No, we don’t.”

She’s ready to fight Reginald, and Klaus mentally begs her to rumor him instead. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t have time for it. Something heavy falls upstairs. Something shatters, and the room fills with squishing sounds.

“I can’t control it, Dad, I can’t control it!” 

Their conversation dies, the coherent part of it, at least. Five blinks himself just to appear behind Reginald’s back and lock his hands around his neck; he twists it, but the bone doesn’t snap — it worked better in Klaus’ dreams. Reginald shakes Five off his back like an annoying bug. 

“Did you just try to kill me?”

“I thought you’re smart enough to understand.”

And then Reginald says,

“Teach them some manners, Number One. You,” he points at Klaus. “And you,” he points at Allison, “are the only ones I have plans for.” 

The chandelier rattles as Vanya’s face turns white, her eyes gleam as the tentacle wraps around her waist. Klaus doesn’t want to know who would win — the White Violin or the Horror. Ben really can’t control it, Klaus is sure he’s crying as the Horror lifts Vanya and Diego in the air, it throws Luther away, over the countertop. Reginald’s liquor cabinet has definitely been smashed. 

“I heard a…”

Another tentacle wraps around Allison’s face, not letting her finish. 

“Oh shit.”

Klaus jumps away when the Horror notices him. He’s weaponless, he sees the shadows around him, he’s about to join them. 

Ben screams. 

And the nightmare turns to reality, Klaus is ready to see the chunks of his flesh hitting the walls as Ben’s anger consumes him. The Horror touches Klaus’ throat, the side of his face. Klaus reaches his hand to touch a thick tentacle that’s marking him with a sticky transparent goo.

“Hey, Lovecraft,” Klaus wheezes. “It’s… It’s me.”

He closes his eyes, expecting to get his bones fractured. But the Horror freezes, one tentacle wrapped around his shoulders; the others stop squeezing his siblings; Allison spits out a curse but doesn’t resort to rumoring. 

“You know me,” Klaus says, still paralyzed. “You can kill me, it’s fine. I’ll come back anyway — God is pissed at me, you know? But… Don’t hurt them,” he nods at his siblings and Ben. “And don’t hurt him, Bentacles is your ticket to this lovely world.” 

He waves Ben a HELLO.

Ben nods. 

“Did it… Recognize you?”*

“I think the Horror’s dimension was not affected by all the time traveling,” Five says. “So it still remembers us from the missions. Or Klaus just _made_ it remember us.”

“I… I can’t hold it,” Ben pants out. “It’s tearing me apart!”

Klaus falls to his knees when the Horror stops pinning him to the wall; the others lose their balance too, and,

The Horror attacks Reginald. 

He lets out a short squeal like a broken toy, and his monocle is about to fall to the ground; Five blinks himself closer to catch it just in time as the tentacle squeezes Reginald’s midsection and lifts him up, and up, and up,

The window shatters as the body hits the glass.

Then, there’s a thud. 

“Holy shit,” Klaus gasps, clamping his palm over his mouth. 

The Horror crawls back, into a hole in Ben’s stomach, stained with blood. He sways and slumps next to the stairs; Klaus wants to check on him, but Luther’s vise grip doesn’t let him.

“Ben?!” he hollers. 

“Go away,” Ben mutters. “I’ll take care of… this.”

“How?!”

“You can’t stay here!” Ben lets out an animalistic growl.

Klaus struggles as Luther drags him away from a semi-conscious Ben; Vanya looks at him too, worried. Her eyes are brown again, but Klaus flinches when she takes his hand. 

“We can’t leave him,” Klaus whimpers. “He saved us.”

The rest of the Umbrellas don’t listen to him.

*** 

The Sparrows might track them down, so they find another hotel, smaller and shabbier, in a quite unfriendly neighborhood. 

“Ben just made things more complicated,” Five says. “We might get accused of Reginald’s death.”

“Oh, you’d prefer to be dead then?” Klaus bites back.

Technically, Ben kidnapped him twice, but then he saved them from Reginald like a hero. So that was just… Assistance? He had to protect himself as well as he had to protect Klaus.

Klaus should stop defending him. 

His mind drifts away as soon as his head hits the pillow. The room is full of ghosts and his siblings, and they keep arguing — “He’s not leaving this room until we find the way to stop the Sparrows” — “Do you really think we need to babysit him?” — “We need to find Claire” — “What if the world is ending again?” — but he doesn’t care. 

For the first time since the briefcase brought them to a twisted 2019, Klaus sleeps like a baby.

**Author's Note:**

> * Womp [commented](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/345391453) on Secondhand Smoke: "Ngl for a split second I thought Klaus was gonna let the horror kill him, either that or the horror was going to recognise him, Which would have been hilarious to see Ben's reaction." and i thought that the horror actually might know klaus and that was a brilliant idea and i decided to use it, thank you so much again <3  
> \---  
> my tumblr: @i-seeaspaceshipinthe-sky  
> \---  
> thanks for reading!  
> comments/thoughts/theories are very appreciated <3


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